


We Are the Dead

by semperama



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Ghosts, M/M, Mild Gore, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 20:05:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6391462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semperama/pseuds/semperama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe he’ll tell him tomorrow. If no mortar falls on his foxhole in the middle of the night, and he wakes up tomorrow with all of his limbs in place, he’ll tell Dick then.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Are the Dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jouissant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jouissant/gifts).



Nix wakes from a nightmare with the sound of screams still ringing in his ears. Someone has stolen the blanket off the top of his foxhole in the night, and snow is falling on his face. He feels colder than ever, his limbs heavy and sluggish with it—so cold he’s past shivering, so cold he can’t remember what it’s like to be warm. When he finds whoever took that blanket, he is going to wring their neck.

He doesn’t pass anyone on his way to the tent. He doesn’t hear the sound of the jeep that hauls the bodies back off the line. The woods are quiet in a way that makes him antsy. They are all turning into wild animals out here, able to smell danger on the breeze. Or they’re all turning paranoid. The danger is always there, so if you think you feel it coming, you’re probably not wrong.

The tent isn’t where he thought it was going to be, but he’s still waking up, and is head is still foggy from that dream. He needs a drink, badly. And anyway, here comes Dick through the trees, his red hair announcing him like a beacon, like a lighthouse drawing Nix in.

“Morning,” Dick says, not quite smiling. Nix feels a little warmer once they are standing nearly toe to toe. Just a little.

“Morning.” Nix thinks about asking Dick to come with him to Battalion CP to get some coffee, but suddenly that doesn’t seem too important. Instead, he asks, “On your way to the line?”

“No,” Dick says, but the sheepish twist of his mouth tells a different story. “Dike has it under control, I’m sure.”

“Oh, you’re sure, huh?” Nix smiles, and Dick smiles back at him. It’s a nice moment, but it doesn’t last. All the nice moments are fleeting nowadays.

A strange, oily panic slides down Nix’s spine all of a sudden, and somehow it’s attached to the thought of Dike. He tenses and looks over his shoulder, toward where the men are hunkered down in their foxholes waiting for the next barrage of German mortars. He can’t see them, but he knows they’re out there. If they were in trouble, he’d be one of the first to know, but that doesn’t keep the fear it bay. It’s probably just the abnormal quiet, or the fact that they have been here for what seems like forever, or the fact that Easy’s current commander is untrustworthy at best and dangerous at worst. Whatever the case, he has a feeling something bad is going to happen.

“You have another nightmare?” Dick asks. 

Nix’s head snaps back around, his eyebrows going up. “Another?”

“Yeah.” Dick frowns. “Yesterday or...maybe it was a couple days ago, you told me you’d had a bad dream. That I died.”

That’s what it was. It comes rushing back to Nix in bright, terrifying flashes. Chunks of trees raining from the sky. Cries of _Medic!_ from every direction. Nix himself running, following Dick, calling after him and begging him to stop. Dick wouldn’t stop. There was nothing he could do, but he was running into the danger anyway, and Nix was following him, because he had no other choice. He’d had enough of Dick running into danger without him.

_Dick, wait! Wait!_ If he could just make him stop for a second, he could talk some sense into him. If he could just make him stop.

The mortar had stopped him alright. It landed in between them, knocking Nix up against a tree with enough force to snatch the breath out of him and darken his vision for a few seconds. When he could see again, the snow was red, so red, and Dick was flat on his back. His helmet was rocking back and forth a few yards away. Their eyes met and Dick blinked, then blinked again. Nix thought that was a good sign, that Dick was blinking. It meant he was still alive. Nix’s chest hurt, and when he felt at it, it was sticky and gave way too much under his fingers. But that didn’t matter. It only mattered that Dick was still alive.

But the snow was so red and the trees were still exploding.

“Nix?” Dick says, making Nix jump, dragging him back out of his head. 

“Sorry,” he hisses, closing his eyes then opening them again. “Sorry. Yeah. It was another bad dream.”

They are fine now. The woods are quiet. There are no screams. Nix can relax.

“We’ll get out of here soon, Nix.” 

Dick claps him on the shoulder, but Nix hardly feels it. It must be the cold. It’s making him numb. “That’s my line,” he says, forcing a smile. “Chicago, right?”

“Just promise me we’ll go in the summer,” Dick says.

It’s funny—Dick doesn’t look that cold right now. A couple days ago he had the flu, and he was pale as a ghost. His nose had been bright red, and Nix would have made jokes about it if he hadn’t been too busy being terrified that Dick was going to catch pneumonia and die in the middle of the Belgian woods. Now though, Dick’s color is back, and his nose isn’t running, and he isn’t shivering. Nix drinks in the sight and lets it comfort him. He lets it block out the vision he has in his head of Dick laid out on the ground, a smudge of red and green against the white snow. 

“Even winter in Chicago wouldn’t touch this,” Nix says, “but we’ll go in the summer. Or the spring.” He pauses and looks up at the patch of gray sky that’s visible through the pine boughs. “New Jersey is nice in the spring too. The trees bloom. There’s this park, in my hometown…”

He trails off, letting himself imagine for a moment that he and Dick could walk through that park together. The petals would fall off the dogwood trees like snow and collect in Dick’s hair, and Nix would brush them off just for an excuse to touch him. Dick would let him, too. He would smile and smile, and he might even let Nix push him up against the tree and kiss the smile away.

Except none of that could ever happen, even if they do make it out of the God-forsaken woods alive. Still, that is the vision Nix would rather have in his head. Better that than blood-red snow. Better that than Dick’s slow blinking and the life slowly draining out of his eyes.

“I want some coffee,” Nix says. He feels for the flask at his hip. It’s light. Empty.

“I don’t think they have any at CP right now. We’re running low on everything.”

“Christ,” Nix groans. “This is hell.”

“I think I’m going to check on Dike after all.” Dick stares wistfully through the trees—the eerily quiet trees. They feel like an audience all of a sudden, like they are bearing witness to the slow unraveling of the 101st Airborne. Nix feels the urge to yell at them, to pound his fist into the unforgiving bark.

He focuses on Dick instead. In the gray morning light, his eyelashes are almost translucent.

“Good luck finding him,” he says. 

“I’ll find him.” Dick searches Nix’s face for a moment, then his eyes travel downward. “You have a hole in your uniform, you know.”

So he does. A ragged one, about three inches across. He puts a hand to the exposed skin of his chest, and it feels smooth and cool, like marble. That probably isn’t a good sign, but somehow it doesn’t alarm him.

“You should see if you can find another one,” Dick says. “Maybe Harry has a spare.”

“Maybe he has a spare blanket too,” Nix says absently. “Someone stole mine.”

“I’ll bet he does.” Dick reaches out and gives Nix’s shoulder a squeeze, and again, Nix can hardly feel it. “Maybe check in with Gene after that. You’re looking a little peaky.”

“It’s just the lack of sleep, I’m sure.”

“Well, then, try to get some more rest, while things are quiet.”

Nix nods, and after one last smile, Dick turns and walks off in the direction of the line. He watches until Dick is out of sight, then keeps watching. His hand is pressed over the hole in his shirt, a pointless attempt to keep the skin warm even though his palm is as cold as ice. 

Sometimes he thinks about telling Dick he loves him. He wants to see his reaction, wants to know if he would smile and say it back, or if his expression would draw up with concern, or if he would try to laugh it off, just like they laugh off so many other things that shouldn’t be laughed about. What if they die here, in these frigid Belgian woods so far from home, and Dick never knows? There are a lot of things Nix wants to take to his grave, but he’s not sure that’s one of them. 

Maybe he’ll tell him tomorrow. If no mortar falls on his foxhole in the middle of the night, and he wakes up tomorrow with all of his limbs in place, he’ll tell Dick then.

But first, he needs to find Battalion CP. He could have sworn it was around here somewhere.


End file.
